Can We Define "Must"? The Semantics of Modality

How do we capture the meaning of "may" or "can"? What kinds of linguistic math do we need to understand them? In this week's episode, we take a look at modality: where words like "must" fit in our meanings; how we consider many ways the world could be to account for their semantics; and how the same string of sounds can have a lot of flavours.

This is Topic #90!

This week's tag language: Cornish!

Related videos:
Logical Connections: How Logical Is Language?    • How Logical is Language? Sentential L...  
Let's Talk About Sets: How Do We Build Meaning with Math?    • How Do We Build Meaning with Math? Se...  
Quantifying Sets and Toasters: What Does "Most" Even Mean?    • What Does "Most" Even Mean? Generaliz...  

Last episode:
Relatively Close: How Can Sentences Work Like Adjectives?    • How Can Sentences Work Like Adjective...  

Other of our semantics and pragmatics videos:
Topic of Focus: How Do We Signal What's Important When We Talk?    • How Do We Signal What's Important Whe...  
Downward Spiral: Why Can't "Any" Go Just Anywhere?    • Why Can't "Any" Go Just Anywhere? NPIs  
Building Common Ground: How Do We Build Shared Worlds in Conversation?    • How Do We Create a Shared World in Co...  

Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, on the syntax of modals, at: http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-90/

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Sources:
A good portion of the presentation was based off of Kai von Fintel's Intensional Semantics notes (http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-heim...)

We also consulted Angelika Kratzer's papers from 1977, 1981, and 1991, where all these ideas about modality originally come from:

The 1977 paper: http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy...

The 1981 paper: http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy...

The 1991 paper: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/kratzer/...

For background -- historical and otherwise -- we consulted Basic Concepts in Modal Logic (https://mally.stanford.edu/notes.pdf) and William Starr's lecture notes: (http://williamstarr.net/teaching.html).

Finally, we drew some inspiration from Seth Cable's recent (and wonderfully lucid) Formal Semantics notes: http://people.umass.edu/scable/LING62...

Looking forward to next time!